The “Golden Hits Of The 60s” 

Main MenuConcept Refinement The Author..Wayne JancikGolden Age Of The 50sGolden Age Of The 60s1970s and There After

 

MAR-KEVS

“Last Night”

Satellite 107

No. 3   August 7, 1961

.

.

.

The Mar-Keys started out in 1957 as the Royal Spades. They all attended Messick High in Memphis, and all

liked that funky black sound. Initially, the group con­ sisted of Charles “Packy” Axton (tenor sax), Steve

Cropper (guitar), Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass), Charlie Freeman (guitar), Terry Johnson (drums), and

occasionally Jerry Lee “Smoochie” Smith (piano).

.

Estelle Axton and her brother, Jim Stewart–both bankers by day–had just set up a small make-shift

recording studio in Brunswick, Tennessee.  When the two ventured into the realm of record-making, they

decided to name their label after those huge, thorny­ looking golf balls that Cape Canaveral was blasting

into space. Unfortunately, one immediate result of the suc­cess of Satellite, “Last Night” was the threat of

legal action by a similarly-named California company, so Jim and Estelle quickly renamed their label

“Stax Records” (Stewart+ Axton).

.

The first few Satellite singles failed to lift off.  Meanwhile, the Royal Spades–who in various configura­tions

appeared on some of these early efforts–tight­ened up their chops playing sock hops, bars, and other

venues, practicing every weekend in the primitive Stax studios in East Memphis. They backed up early

Stax hit-makers like Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla.  But it was “Last Night,” a deceptively simple,

blues­ riffin’ instrumental worked up by those studio musi­cians, that established the trademark Stax

sound–a sound that in its day was as unique, and nearly as influential, as Detroit’s Motown sound.

.

“When we put it out, it exploded like nothing had ever exploded before,” Estelle Axton told Peter Gural­nick

in Sweet Soul Music.  ‘Tm telling you, I sold over 2,000 of it one by one over the counter [of Satellite’s

record store].  They certified a million on it eventually . .. I was so proud of it.  I’ve never been so proud of

a record in my life.”

.

The tune reportedly evolved over a six-month peri­od, and went through so many changes that the actual

line-up of personnel present on the disk is in dispute.  Guralnick has theorized that present for the session

were probably Curtis Green (drums), Bob McGee (bass), “Smoochie” Smith, and a horn line-up compris­

ing Packy, Gilbert Caples (tenor sax), and Floyd New­man (baritone sax).  Yet it was the ever-evolving

Royal Spades–Axton, Cropper, Dunn, Smith, and Johnson, plus Wayne Jackson (trumpet) and Don Nix

(baritone sax)–who would tour and record as “The Mar-Keys.”

.

Before the name was scrapped in the early ’70s, sev­eral albums appeared, as did singles like “Morning

After” (#60, 1961), “Pop-Eye Stroll” (#94, 1962), and “Philly Dog” (#89, 1966).  Despite the act’s success,

internal frictions appeared almost immediately.   Even by the end of 1960, Steve and Duck were off to join

Booker T Jones and AI Jackson, Jr., in the label’s second classic back-up unit, Booker T & The MGs.   By

1965, Packy was fronting the Packers, a studio act that chart­ed with a Mar-Keys knock-off called “Hole in

the Wall” (#43, 1965).  Nix went on to produce artists like Jeff Beck, Delaney & Bonnie, Albert King,

Freddie King, and John Mayall.

.

Both Packy Axton and Charlie Freeman have since passed away.